Amtrak still struggles after thirty years

Posted: Tuesday, May 01, 2001

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amtrak turns 30 on Tuesday, but it still carries the burden of a troubled infancy.

Formed in 1971 to relieve freight railroads from the cash-draining responsibility of passenger service, the national railway never resolved its core challenge: maintaining a national passenger system, while functioning as a bottom-line business.

The struggle continues, with new urgency. In 1998, just one of Amtrak's 40 routes made money, and Congress has ordered Amtrak to right itself financially by 2003 or face dissolution.

Amtrak supporters and critics alike say it's time to decide whether the nation wants long-distance train service, and at what cost.

Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said Congress is finally ready to put its foot down if Amtrak does not make major improvements to its bottom line.

"I won't let this slide again," said Young, R-Alaska.

Amtrak President George Warrington is confident about the future, saying the railway is ready as more Americans turn to rail as an alternative to highways and airports.

"We have made extraordinary progress in shedding a lot of the negative baggage about Amtrak the institution," he said.

Amtrak has consumed more than $23 billion in federal subsidies since 1971. It lost $944 million last year, the most in its history, according to the Department of Transportation's inspector general. There is no shortage of opinions on why Amtrak has struggled for so long.

Ronald Utt, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, blames management. "What you have is a board that survives because it's politically adept at getting enough money to keep the railroad in existence," he said.

Anthony Haswell, who played a role in Amtrak's creation as founder of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, says the railway insists on retaining a national system of trains rather than focusing service on areas with profit potential.

The Amtrak Reform Council, an oversight board formed by Congress in 1997, blames a "flawed institutional structure" that forces the railway to juggle government and business roles.

Tom Downs, former Amtrak president, says Congress and the White House never told Amtrak whether it was more important to be profitable or to continue serving parts of the country where it loses money.

Young argues that the north-south routes on both coasts can be profitable. "The question is," he said, "do we need Amtrak all over the country, wherever one congressman wants an Amtrak train?"

Amtrak engineers will literally blow their own horns at noon on Tuesday to mark completion of the railway's third decade. A more appropriate sound would be a sigh of relief.